The restaurant started as a small vegetable stand on PDA office premises where the vegetables, along with lace panties, T-shirts, key chains, condoms, and oral contraceptives were sold to the local residents. PDA’s Chairman, Mechai Viravaidya, called the shop “Cabbages and Condoms”, a catchy sobriquet that never failed to elicit chuckles from passersby and draw the curious into the shop. In the seventies Mechai added a small outdoor restaurant where the ‘Som Tam’ (Green Papaya Salad) and ‘Larb Gai’ (Spicy Chicken Salad) were among the best in Bangkok. As the cuisine gained a reputation, outsiders began showing up. Some of our specialty dishes you may try are ‘Massaman Curry’(Chicken, beef or lamp sweet curry with potato), ‘Mieng Khum’ (Thai ancient appetizer-lemon, dried shrimp, peanut, ginger, deep-fried coconut, chilli, shallots and special sauce with wild betel leaves), ‘Phad Thai Goong Sod’ (Stir-fried rice noodle with shrimps), ‘Tom Yam Goong’ (Thai spicy shrimp soup, seasoned with chilli, lime, lemongrass and galangal), ‘Khao Niew Mamuang Inter’ (Mango and sweet rice) and ‘Po Pia Tod’ (Deep-fried roll of vegetables and glass noodle).

Today, the award-winning ‘Cabbages and Condoms’ Restaurant is acknowledged as one of the finest Thai restaurants in Bangkok. It attracts diners from all over the world, can comfortably seat 400 guests at any one time and does so on many nights.

To find out more about PDA and its charitable work, please visit : www.pda.or.th

Presently, Cabbages & Condoms operates in Thailand, England and Japan. Here is a list of our facilities in Thailand and overseas: